Bush Medicine: Treatment session

Around 40 Garma women attended the treatment session today. The Yolngu Women were working on general health healing which included healing everything from bad backs to broken limbs. The plants collect on Day 2 of the Festival were used in the process.

First off all the Butjirinanin leaves were torn up by hand and soaked in water until the water became thick with natural oils.

Next the stringy Bark wash smashed with rocks and also immersed in water.

While the leaves and bark were being prepared the women dug a shallow hole in the ground about the length of a body. Branches and the pandanas seed pods were placed in the hole and lit on fire.

After the fire had burned down and the ashes were left, the women placed the soaking bark and leaves, water reeds and some long strips of Paper bark onto the ashes.

The healing process began.

Anyone with aches and pains were asked to lie down on the paper bark and the Yolngu women rubbed the remainder of leaves and reeds across there bodies while massaging the therapeutic mixture into their skin.

The Yolngu women not only spoke about the healing qualities of the natural oils but also about the healing of the spirit through the ancestors of this land.

The entire process was amazing and it was an honor to take part in such an ancient healing process.

Bungul

The Dhalinybuy people, the mari (grandmother) group of the Gumatj people, started the bungul.

First they broke off into groups, into mari-gutharra and yothu yindi.

The sand mice take rumours one place to another. Full of activities. They are so small they have to move fast to beat the predators. At the same time, the other group danced the possum. Possums do the same things - moving fast from place to place. They keep moving their nests and their litters, hiding them away in a safe place.

The dog came, sniffing the sand mice who run here, there and everywhere. But the cockatoos are complaining about the dogs.

Cockatoos are gossiping to other animals, telling everyone that there is a danger of dogs. The cockatoos play an important role in the song cycle, especially when the spirit people, the deceased, are travelling to the next world.

Early morning, about 5 o'clock, is the time to see the greyness on the leaves before the dawn. The cobwebs are spun by the long-legged spider are on the underneath of the leaves. Their hands are busy, weaving very fine strings, then the fly comes and they eat them.

Dogs come out in the cool of the evening. These dogs are not dingos. This song tells of a striped dog, perhaps like a Tasmanian tiger.

The dawn, the sunrise; the dog is howling and moving. The dog is a friend of the country - it carries big stories in this song cycle. Cobwebs, dew and fog - they play the same part as the spiders that build webs under the branches of trees.

The beginning of the new day normally ends the song cycle. The breeze comes in. But these breezes are the dog's dances. The breeze takes the dew away from the leaves on the branches, and from this dance before the sunrise comes the beginning of a new day.

The gutharra group leaves the bungul ground and in the last song, the cobwebs are danced again, in expectation of more to come.

Next the maripulu of the Gumatj, dance again. These dances represent the arrival of the Macassan traders and their practices, over many years of free trading, long before the arrival of tall ships in Sydney Cove. Aboriginal people have a long history trading and know what trading is about from what the Macassans brought and what they shared but have been "badly left behind". These dances are a record of the first boat arrival in the country. Where this happened there was once sea but now it is 20-30km inland from Numbulwar. These are stories of weather pattern changes in song. As in the Kimberley there are paintings of ships depicted in rock art along the coast of Numbulwar.

Galarrwuy identified one of the functions of Garma as training young men and women, whatever language and tribe, back to the basic movement of dancers...as Bangara: all energy, all power.

Dancers of Maningrida, with classic Umbarra style, present baru, crocodile dreaming, and finished the bungul with a song of farewell, that finishes the cycle of ceremonies in the cycle of songs.